Sunday, 31 March 2013

I saw this on tumblr and it is
so neat. Google maps without the boring bits. Click on it and go somewhere.
First time I got the centre of the coliseum in Rome, and then a bar in Ireland.
I even got underwater on the Great Barrier Reef. My friend got the South Pole.

So I click it for today’s
challenge and get a birch plantation in France. Hmmm. Wander around a little
and start writing.

995 words.

I have no title, I am hopeless at making up titles. [Image from googlemaps.] I forgot to take a screen shot of the place I landed... silly me.

8888888888

She closed her eyes; too terrified
to look. The thought of seeing images flash by her made her nauseous.

When she opened them, she was
standing in a forest of tall slender trees with grey bark. Birches? The air was
foggy and it looked cool, almost cold. The leafless trees formed perfect
straight lines. A plantation not a forest.

She turned and looked around. A
road. She walked. The survival suit was troublesome but it allowed her to
breathe and she didn’t get cold. It had a disguise capability. She could copy
and mimic the persona of someone she met. Problem was she hadn’t met anyone,
yet. It also had a translator and a communicator, but other than that, she was
on her own. Her first assignment.

Ah, a sealed road with signs of
life; a refuse bin and a streetlight. It was then she found the warning sign. Le-conseil-general
de tarn-Garonne. French, the translator said.

She found a tiny, narrow bridge
but couldn’t work out how to make the suit cross it and resigned herself to
more walking. Perhaps the suit was trying to tell her not to go that way? She
walked, dodging the water-filled potholes in the hedge-lined road. The crops
became more agricultural. Hops, the suit said, for beer. She saw a traffic sign
that had arrows mostly pointed to the left so she went that way. She wondered
how much time they had allocated her and if getting lost was a complete
defense.

An epic fail, more like, if she
couldn’t work out how to navigate.

Perhaps she was supposed to learn
the suit capabilities while she was wandering about? Could she jump? Leap? She
jumped in place and got the sickening sensation of landing too slowly. Well,
that worked, but she wasn’t sure that she liked it.

She passed a couple of larger
houses with locked security gates. If it was the correct address, she would
know. Another sign. Saint-Nicolas-de-la-Grave in the French Pyrenees,
population 2166.

Nervously, she checked the details
for the hundredth time. This was the place.

Now all she needed to do was find
her target, Joel Alsace.

Why didn’t they just send her
straight here? Save her walking? Surely they could just transport her right
into the room with him?

Him.

She shouldn’t think about it. He
wasn’t a person, he was just a target. She idly wondered what he had done to
deserve this. Not that it mattered to her. She wasn’t the judge or jury; just
the executioner.

A ping. A reminder that her time
was running out. She still hadn’t seen another person to mimic. Maybe she could
copy a background? No. That would never work. Someone would be sure to notice
if the wallpaper attacked them. The suit ought to have fall back standard
people.

“Load standard female image,” she
told the suit as she stared at her gloved hand. It became bare, with pale flesh
and long, slim fingers. Phew. So that worked.

The sun was rising and noises from
the nearby farms told her better than a ping, that she was running out of time.
The whole village was caught on the edge of waking.

She stood in front of the old
house. The shutters had faded; white paint peeling to expose the wood. They
were all closed. A glance confirmed open shutters on other houses. This guy was
careful. Did he know she was coming? He should, if he had done something wrong.
There was no escape from them.

She walked around the corner and
found the entrance. Her hand pushed against the door and it opened. Did the
suit pick the lock? Or did he open it for her?

She trod silently through the
house.

He was waiting for her in the main
room. It was dark with all the shutters still closed but she saw him easily
with her suit-enhanced vision. He stood; straight and tall with his hand
resting on the back of a plain wooden chair.

“So it’s today?” he asked.

She didn’t know what to say, so
she said nothing. She should have just eliminated him immediately, but she
didn’t do that, either.

And she didn’t know why.

He moved suddenly; flipped the
chair up in one hand and pushed it against her until she hit the wall behind
her. Held at chair’s length she panicked and forgot that she had weapons. Her
arms were pinioned under the chair rungs.

He leant his weight against the
chair and reached up and flicked her visor open.

She almost panicked; thinking she
wouldn’t be able to breathe, but her lungs took a great gulp of the house air.
It tasted of old books and dried leaves with a hint of wood smoke from the open
fire.

“Christ! You’re so young!” he
said.

“How did you know what to do?”
she asked before the obvious thought hit her. “You used to do this!” she
accused.

“Yes.” He waved at her. “Standard
female.”

“You knew I was coming.”

“Not you, particularly, but
someone. They always choose just before dawn.”

He hadn’t failed at this, like
her. “You were good at it.”

He nodded. He looked amused.

“I’m an epic fail,” she said.

“I was very good.”

“So why do they want you dead?”

“They don’t say.”

“No. Too good?”

“Maybe.”

She still hadn’t killed him and
more importantly, he hadn’t killed her.
The only weapon he had was a chair.

“You can’t go back,” he said.

“They know where I am.”

“Guess we’re moving then.”

“We?”

He studied her. “You aren’t going
to kill me.”

“No.”

He dropped the chair and held out
his hand. “Joel.”

She took it. “Marianne.”

“Suit off,” he ordered. “I’ll destroy
it.”

“But--”

“Off!”

He passed her a blanket.

She huddled in an armchair and
watched it burn. She hoped he was good; both their lives depended on it, now.
But she was determined to learn more.

Wednesday, 27 March 2013

Lola half challenged me
to write the story using the remaining five words... and you know I love
a challenge.

Dolphin

Undertaker

Envelope

Chisel

Satellite

The title is from one
of my favourite Billy Bragg songs “New England” - ‘I saw two shooting stars
last night/ I wished on them, but they were only satellites/ is it wrong to
wish on space hardware?... I wish, I wish, I wish you’d care.

The risk to human life or property
was very small, the TV said as twenty-six pieces of satellite broke into space
junk and entered the atmosphere. They had debris trackers but couldn’t warn
people until twenty-five minutes before it hit. So much for advanced
technology. They could put it up there but couldn’t get it back down.

It was a freak accident. Everyone
said that. As if by saying how rare it was would make his daughter less dead?

He was an undertaker. He dealt
with death every day but even his brilliant skills of facial reconstruction were
defeated. A useless lump of space flotsam that had fallen inexorably to earth
after its batteries had gone flat and it had served the fleetingly short term
of its unnatural life.

Space junk.

At least rubbish at sea washed
gently ashore, it didn’t fall on ten year old girls waiting at the bus stop.

Was it flotsam or jetsam? He could
never remember the difference. And he was annoyed that he was even thinking
about it. It was just junk.

She was what was important.

He wouldn’t allow interviews no
matter how long they hung outside his home shoving cameras and microphones in
his face. Someone had given them a shot of her in her school uniform but they
stopped showing it after a while; it was just too tragic to see her bright
smile and her pig tails held high and tight with the dolphin clips.

He insisted on preparing her body
himself. He was determined that not a single part of the foreign object would
go to her grave with her, even if he had to chisel the molten metal from her
bones. He was hammering away when he heard the news bulletin on the TV. He had
put on her favourite soap opera for her, the one set at the beach resort in
Australia but they interrupted with a breaking news report.

The news anchor breathlessly relayed
that there had been another victim of the satellite crash, a dolphin at the water
park. It had survived. This allowed them to be happy about the news. Some good
news at last. They had the human interest angle now.

He stared at the screen.

A dolphin?

How odd. She had been reading a
book on dolphins and had been listening to them ‘talk’ on her iPod. That was
why she hadn’t noticed the meteor shower. She was obsessed with them.

He wrote the trainer’s name on the
back of an envelope.

His wife had died years ago and he
stood alone at the funeral. For some reason he kept the chisel and the envelope
in his pocket. He kept touching them gently during the service.

Afterwards he found it hard to
continue his work. Touching other bodies felt wrong. Disloyal. He shut the funeral
home, packed a small bag and took a train to the coast.

They had been to the waterpark
before, of course they had. Every single school holiday if he could take the
time. He wished they had come more often, but death didn’t wait. He knew that. He
had always felt honoured to help others into the next world, now he wasn’t so
sure that it existed; not if freak accidents happened to innocent girls.

He asked at the office if he could
speak to the trainer. They explained that she was very busy today. He explained
who he was.

“Oh,” said the lady at the
counter. “I’ll call her for you.”

He waited nervously, clutching the
envelope and wondering what he was doing there.

She looked tired; more tired than
she had on the news. “He’s not well,” she said.

She took him to the pool.

He knew what a healthy dolphin looked
like and this one swam listlessly.

“What’s his name?” he asked.

“Cha-cha.” She shrugged. “It’s not
very dignified, but they have a naming competition and the park owners chose
that.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s ten. That’s quite old for a
captive dolphin. They live much longer in the wild.”

“Ten.” It was just too coincidental.
“My daughter was ten.”

“I noticed that.”

“That seems… significant.”

“Yes.”

He came back the next day. He brought
her lunch. He didn’t think she was looking after herself. They talked. She was
the first person he had talked to about himself in years. They felt joined by
the tragedy.

He couldn’t remember who suggested
it, that Cha-cha would probably be happier in the wild.

They exchanged a weighted look.

It took a couple of days to
organise. He rented a horse trailer. She had keys to the enclosure. “It’ll cost
me my job,” she said.

He just nodded.

The dolphins trusted her and they
seemed to know what they were doing. They were silent. The chisel propped the gate
open. The dolphin had lost weight but still weighed 150 kilograms. He threw
himself onto a rubber sheet when she asked him to. They dragged him onto a flat
trolley and then rolled it up ramps into the trailer. Buckets of water poured
over him kept his skin wet.

They reversed the procedure at the
beach. A couple of surfers helped. It had taken much longer than they planned
and the sun was rising by the time they got Cha-cha into the water. He ate some
fish out of their hands and then he swam away. He wasn’t listless now.

It made the news.

They stood in the press conference
and held hands and just said that it seemed like the right thing to do.

The park didn’t press charges, the
public loved them. Cha-cha probably would have died. They kept in touch with
the surfers. They said they saw him occasionally.

They sold the funeral home and
moved to another coastal town. If anyone ever asked how they met, they just
smiled and said it was in very unusual circumstances.

You will include those five
aspects — not just as words but as actual componentsof the story — in your 1000-word flash
fiction this week.

Pick words. Write story. Go.”

My effort is 761 words

~~~~~~~

For James Herbert who died on
March 20th 2013.

The library.

She loved the public library. She remembered
the supreme joy she felt when she got her very own library card. She had read
the entire children’s section twice. She came there to study after school every
single day. She didn’t really have room at home. She remembered how grown up
she felt when she worked out how to use the self-service machine so that that
the librarian couldn’t see she was borrowing adult books. She still came there
every week as an adult. The library had changed a little. Now there were
computers to use, movies to borrow and audio books to listen to. But it was
still her adventure playground, her safe place in bad times and her very favourite
place to be.

So why wouldn’t it let her leave?

Today, she had zapped her books at
the bar code reader, popped them in her book bag and walked purposefully
towards the only exit, when BAM! She was back in among the shelves. She tried
it a second time with the same result. She was on replay.

She tried again. This time she ended
up in Biographies.

There was only one exit because it
had a magnetic gate to make sure that no one stole any books. A loud alarm
sounded if someone tried it.

She attempted to sneak up on the
exit but that didn’t work either. Large print section. Ugh. She wouldn’t need
to be in this section for a long time yet. It was being rude, now.

She glanced out the window. There was
clearly a nasty storm approaching and she had hoped to be home before it hit. The
clouds looked green. She had wasted fifteen minutes trying to leave and she was
likely to miss her bus. It was an odd thought. She had never wanted to leave the library before.

She watched others to see if they had
the same experience and they were allowed to leave unimpeded. She tried again.
Gardening section. She stared at a book spine labelled ‘the joy of cacti. Yeah,
right. It was painful.

If she didn’t look directly at the
exit, she could see a kind of grey shadow over it. She worked hard at not-looking and she saw out of the
corner of her eye, that there was a cube blocking the exit. It was grey and
transparent and it only worked on her. It was ethereal; not really there.

She stood in front of the not
there ethereal cube and told it severely, “I need to leave. I have washing on the
line and I will miss my bus.”

No response, other than some very
weird looks from the other library patrons.

She stepped forward; sure that
having asked permission, she’d be okay.

Nope.

Non-fiction, etiquette guide.

Right. She got it. She hadn’t
really asked, she had just said she wanted to leave.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “That was
rude.”

This time she stood meekly in front
of it, bowed her head and said, “If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to leave.”

Non-fiction; weather forecasting.

“Oh, I see. It’s the storm.”

“Why?” she asked, just as she
stepped into it again.

Fiction. Horror.

“Ooh. Okay. I think I understand. There
will be a death… maybe mine?”

She approached the cube a final
time. “I think I understand. You let me know when it’s safe to leave.”

This time she turned her back and
walked away. From the corner of her eyes the grey cube seemed to get a pinkish
tinge as if it was pleased with itself.

She settled down in a comfortable
armchair and started to read one of the books she had borrowed.

She was immersed in a world of
dragons and swords and had lost track of the time when the librarian rushed
over to her. “Oh, thank goodness, you are still here. I thought you were on that
bus.”

“What happened?” she asked,
although she suspected that she already knew.

“A huge tree… it fell on the bus…
it’s awful… everyone is dead. The radio said it looks like a scene from a James
Herbert novel.”

“Gosh.”

“How lucky that you stayed.”

“Yes, it was, wasn’t it?”

“I just finished my shift if you’d
like a lift home?”

She glanced from the kindly
librarian’s face to the windows. It was still raining. “Yes, please.”

“I’ll be five minutes. Meet you at
the exit.”

She stood, packed away her book
and walked to the exit.

“Thank you. I love you, too,” she
told the library. “And I will see you tomorrow.”

They passed three quarters of a
million in mid-October and have kept ticking over steadily since then. I don’t
know what magic formula I managed to hit but most of the reviews say something like:
they liked it more than they thought they would, or that they have never read
threesomes, or they don’t usually read wolf stories, or they don’t usually like
Bella or Quil and that this story changed their mind … it’s
quite amusing.

And I have no idea what I did to
get that result. But I am pleased and proud that I made people change their
minds; that I wrote characters that they care about and I’m overjoyed that they
love my story enough to tell me.

It has won awards for the most erotic
story, the best love scene, best slash (male/male sex) and for comedy as well.
My personal favourite award title is the JBNP one for ‘the Wolfish Grin Award -
SLASH/BDSM - Kinkiest fuckery of all wolf types 2012.’ That made my real life
friends laugh a lot.

It started off as a sexy one-shot
idea and they just wouldn’t let me go. So, then it turned into a much more
complex story. Being a polyamorous story there are issues with social
acceptance and reactions from friends and family, as well as problems with past
lovers and how their relationship affects others in their lives and, of course,
the supernatural. Sex usually has consequences in my stories; I suppose that’s one
of my themes.

I have a list of people to thank: every
single reader (whether they reviewed or not), my betas feebes86 and ruadhsidhe,
JBNP for all their support and Goldengirl who made me some awesome banners.
Feebes told me ages ago that this story would be the biggest thing I had ever
written.

GG loved it so much she set
herself the impossible task of making a banner for each chapter. That was
before it hit 89 chapters. She made me the story banner above and it is completely
perfect. I love the skin contrast, the guy hands, and the fact that the girl
has long hair, and one guy is bigger than the other.

Sunday, 17 March 2013

This week’s flash fiction challenge from Chuck Wendig was the website theyfightcrime.org. It randomly generates a
crime fighting duo with some interesting features. I refreshed a couple of
times, laughing hysterically as I did so, until I got this one:

He's a suicidal voodoo cop with a winning smile and a way with the
ladies. She's a warm-hearted insomniac socialite married to the Mob. They fight
crime!

I choose names from hitting the random
article button on the Wikipedia site until I get something that will fit.

Harry Wild Jones and Angela Gravano

Limit of 1,000 words. My word
count is 959.

~~~~~~~~~

Handbags and voodoo

A well-manicured hand grabbed his arm.
“Detective Jones? I saw you at that charity event last month,” she hissed at
him.

“What? So?”

“That woman wasn’t interested in
you at all. And then you blew some powder from your hand into her face.”

He just stared at the woman accusing
him.

“After that, she was all over you
like a rash. Did you drug her?”

He grabbed her arm and dragged her
away from the others at the crime scene. “It’s not what you think.”

“Really? I may not work and I may
just run parties all the time but that doesn’t make me stupid.”

He looked at her carefully; he had
assumed she was just a socialite wife. The immaculate hair, expensive wardrobe
and make-up marked her as one. He suspected her handbag cost more than his
yearly salary.

“I asked her about you at the next
function and she didn’t recognise your name.” She poked him in the chest. “You’re
a cop! You can’t drug women like that. It’s against the law!”

He tried to change the subject. “What
are you doing at a crime scene at…” He checked his watch. “…three am?”

She looked caught out. “I couldn’t
sleep.”

She hadn’t slept at all if the
hair and make-up was a guide. He noted the wedding ring. “Huh. Husband doesn’t
miss you?”

“He has his own bedroom. He works
odd hours and why am I telling you
this?”

He grinned at her; leaning in
towards her slightly. “I’m charming.”

“Humph.”

“Crime scene?” he asked again.

“I listen to the police radio.”

“How?”

“Oh, it’s all online now. You can
even get an app for your phone.”

“What does your husband think of
this?”

“He doesn’t mind.” She shrugged. “It
helps with his business.”

“Which is?”

“You don’t want to know.”

He frowned. He needed to do some
research on this woman. But right now, he thought he’d have some fun. “So who’s
the main suspect, Sherlock?”

Her face softened as she glanced
back to the room where the woman’s body was lying. “You all think it’s the
husband, but I think it’s her brother.”

She kept talking. “She was having
an affair, but her husband doesn’t care. He’s one of those anything for her
guys.”

“It’s not the lover?”

She launched into an intricate
explanation of who said what to whom at which party and then so and so told her…

When she had finished - he could
tell because she stopped talking and looked at him expectantly. “Money?” he checked.

“Yes. She said no more loans to
the deadbeat brother.”

“Do you know the brother’s
address?”

“Yes. Can we go there now? Where’s
your partner?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Why not? I thought it was policy.”

“Mine keep getting shot.”

“Is that your fault?”

He blinked. “Ah… maybe. I can be a
little… reckless.”

“Humph. Suicidal, more likely.”

She annoyed him with the humphs. “Do
you want to go see the brother or not?”

“Yes, please.”

“Wait in the hall. I won’t leave
without you.”

“You can’t. I have the address.”

She was smart. He watched her walk
away, which might have been a bad idea. The Chanel suit fitted her in all the
right places and her heels clicked on the floor enticingly.

“Why is she here?” the uniformed
cop asked.

“She had information.”

“Angela Gravano knows her?” his
head inclined towards the body. “Is this a mob hit?”

Oh shit. Now he remembered where
he had seen her. She was the wife of Tony ‘Chains’ Gravano, a capo in the mob. She
was right; he didn’t want to know anything about her husband’s business. “There’s
a lead I want to check out. A brother. Owed her some money.”

“Money.” The cop sighed. “Always
money or drugs.”

“Or love.”

~~~~~~~

She was standing by his car.

“How did you know this was my car?”

She just pointed at the gris gris
hanging from his rear-view mirror.

He opened the door for her. She gave
him the address.

“The powder?” she asked, as they
drove.

“Voodoo is used to serve others.”

“She needed you to sleep with her?”

He glanced at her. “Yeah, she did.
She felt unloved and rejected and alone. It was just pouring off her. And I
told her my name was Harry Wild, so she wouldn’t have recognised Jones.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Middle name,” he explained.

She was silent for a minute. “She
seems happier lately,” she conceded.

“She’ll move on, now.”

“From?”

“Her lover died of cancer last
year.”

“Now that I did not know. You
surprise me, Detective Jones.”

“Call me Harry.”

She nodded. “Angela.”

“So, you don’t sleep?” he asked
her.

“So, you do voodoo?” she replied.

“Touché.”

They grinned at each other.

~~~~~

Her brother made it easy; he ran
when Harry held up his badge.

Angela clocked him with her
handbag as he exited the back door.

“I told you to stay in the car and
don’t humph at me,” Harry said, as he cuffed him.

Angela just looked superior.

He called it in. She sulked when
he wouldn’t let her do it.

He asked her to wait outside the
station. He was back within fifteen minutes.

Monday, 11 March 2013

Another week another challenge from Chuck Wendig. This week he chose a random sentence generator. Given some
of them are pretty … well, random, he
allowed you a few re-clicks until you got a sentence you liked.

I got the following:

The creative gate pokes the spoilt wreck.

An outcome clicks outside the amended premise.

The beard downs a lavatory.

The beard seemed eerily
appropriate for Chuck, given that he sports a large reddish beard, but then I got:

The disappointing crystal approaches an empties concert.

Oh, now… that’ll work!

Less than 1,000 words - mine is
778.

~~~~~~~~

The disappointing crystal.

Empties were, by their very
nature, empty. But they were not void. They took their emotions and feelings
from an annual concert. Like a lunar calendar that concert set the tone for
the entire city for the whole of the coming year.

It was a pretty important event.

Past years had been affected by
the dizzying wonder of empties filled with motivation and ambition. The year of
happiness was one that everyone remembered fondly.

The empties were odd, jellyfish-like
creatures that floated benignly through the city, spreading their inescapable
emotion to all.

No one knew where they came from
or how they even existed. There seemed to be a static number of them. They neither
lived nor died but merely existed. They did not communicate other than by
radiating the current yearly sentiment. They could not be avoided; they invaded
your home, influenced your dreams and changed your life. The year of anger had
decimated the population. The assault and murder rate had skyrocketed and it
had taken the city years to rebuild and recover.

Visitors to the city were
astonished to see them floating around. The locals had become so used to them
that they no longer really took any notice of them. They just were.

The crystals on the other hand
were secretive and rarely seen. They lived in a gigantic underground cavern. Each
year one was chosen in a secret ritual that no one had ever witnessed. Each year
that single crystal made the solitary walk to the concert.

Crystals were of the earth and
empties of the sky. It was just the way things were.

It was thought that they had a
symbiotic relationship; each could not exist without the other.

The city residents were not
allowed to attend the concert. They lined the route from the cavern to the
concert hall to get a glimpse of the shining crystal that would determine the
fate of them all.

The empties seemed to know when it
was concert day. They slowly bobbed and eddied towards the concert hall. By late
afternoon, the hall was full of them. They waited for the crystal to enter. A
crystal never left again after the ceremony. It was as if the empties completely
consumed it.

The first people lining the route caught
sight of this year’s crystal as it left the cavern. It was clear and transparent.
The young, eager people always stood too close to the start. Older, wiser heads
knew the colour of the crystal changed as it approached the concert hall. It
was exciting to see it first, but more useful to see it later. Not that knowing
what was coming helped you to prepare for it. It couldn't be avoided. The choice
was made the second the crystal started that walk.

Small children moved, running from
their earlier position to a later one to witness the colour change.

The crystal walked carefully, as
if it could shatter if it set its foot down too hard. It looked humanoid with
two arms and two legs. The hands were held carefully together in front of the
body, not swung where they might brush against something and be damaged. The head
with its glass face was covered in flat planes that resembled features. It looked
down at the ground as it stepped delicately.

The crowd watched with bated
breath for the first glimpse of colour. It looked slightly greenish. Some
murmured hopefully. A year of growth would be a good thing.

But then a low moan came from one very
old woman. Others asked what was wrong. She pointed her hand at the crystal as
the hopeful green became tinged with an ugly brown shade. “Not again,” the old woman
said.

The word scattered through the
crowd like a rush of wind.

Disappointment.

Disillusionment.

The crystal looked it now, as if
it knew what it brought to the city.

One impetuous man lifted a rock
and hefted it in his hand as it to throw it, before others wrestled him to the
ground. It was wrong to harm the crystals. No one knew what happened in a year
with no crystal. A cloud of empties filled with nothing might do untold damage.

Frustration and regret already
tainted the crowd.

They watched as the crystal made
the steps along the final part of the journey.

At the doorway it stopped.

It turned its face towards the
crowd; seemingly remorseful before it turned and stepped inside the concert
hall.

The crowd was silent for a minute.
Then slowly, they started to peel away and make their way home.

Thursday, 7 March 2013

I couldn't help myself and rolled
the dice (pressed the random buttons) again for Chuck Wendig’s last fic challenge.

This time I got:

genre - 9 hardboiled

setting - 10 a popular nightclub on Friday night

conflict - 1 revenge

aspect to include - 3 a bad dream

theme - 2 love will save the day

~~~~~

Again, I had to look up
hardboiled. Oh, right… Maltese Falcon.

Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre sharing the
setting with crime fiction (especially detective stories). Although deriving
from romantic tradition which emphasized the emotions of apprehension, horror
and terror, and awe, the hardboiled fiction deviates from the tradition in the
detective's cynical attitude towards those emotions. The attitude is conveyed
through the detective's self-talk describing to the reader (or - in the film -
to the viewer) what he is doing and feeling. The genre's typical protagonist
was a detective having to witness on a daily basis the violence of the
organized crime flourishing during the prohibition, and having on the other
hand to deal with the legal system that had become as corrupt as the organized
crime itself,[1] making him a burnout hero. [from Wikipedia.]

~~~~~

The German accountant

My client was money. Lots of
money. It dripped off her with every wave of her perfectly manicured hand. Took
her a while to get down to business. Took her a while to sit, too. She almost
dusted the chair seat before she sat down.

I fumbled for my cigarette case. Offered
her one, she shook her head, no.

She talked.

I listened.

I stood, back against the frame
and looked out the window for as long as it took me to smoke that cigarette and
then I sat on the corner of my desk. The corner closest to her. I gave her a
look. She was worth a stare.

She was slim and petite but looked
durable. Expensive clothes. Blond hair parted in the middle and cut shorter
than the fashion. Her mouth was thin. She used bright red lipstick to make it look
better. It didn’t. She sat like a lady with her feet folded out to the side. I
didn’t think she was a lady. The chauffer waited outside for her. I’d seen him
from the window. She had money, all right, but it was new money. Maybe from
daddy.

Right now she was in trouble. Husband
trouble.

She gave me the details. I asked
some questions.

“Twenty five dollars a day, plus
expenses,” I said before she got weepy.

I didn’t ask how she got my name.
I knew. A recommendation. I worked alone. Didn’t have a secretary. I kept my
mouth shut. I wasn’t gonna talk. Her reputation and her money were safe with
me.

I thought about putting up my
rates for special cases. Cases that could afford it. Nah. I was what I was, and
it wasn’t expensive.

I went to the address she gave me and
saw the husband leave in a dark sedan. He matched the photo she had given me. He
did normal husbandly things. Went to the office. Had lunch with a client. Went
home.

I waited.

It was after midnight when he got
in his car again. I followed him to three different addresses. At each one he left
after another person did. Meetings. Assignations. Whatever you wanted to call
them. He was meeting them it seemed.

He was a busy man. Not all women,
so it wasn’t sex.

I didn’t see him carry anything in
or take anything out. No brown paper wrapped books of porn. But it could have
been small. Drugs, maybe?

I followed the last guy he met back
to his place. It was almost dawn and I needed a new lead. Looked like a nice
suburb. Quiet. Small houses. Comfortable, not rich.

As I sat, studying the houses, there
was a streak of light; a hot, hard flash and then nothing. A gunshot. I knew it
when I saw one. I thought about it. Then I got out of my car and hot footed it
inside. The door of the small bungalow was unlocked. The back door open. The shooter
gone. The dead guy was dead. His ID read Boris Mecklenburg. He was an
accountant at a big firm. Two glasses on the coffee table. One stained with
bright red lipstick. I wiped everything down that I touched.

I drove to the nearest drugstore and
bought a quart of bourbon. I sat in my car in the driving rain and drank a few mouthfuls
until the bitter taste in my mouth was gone.

I watched the sun rise and I
thought of another mouth with bright red lipstick.

I drove back to the bungalow to
check. No cops on the scene. After watching for a while I went back into the house.
The body was gone. The room had been cleaned. The glasses were squeaky clean in
the dish drainer. Nothing in the trash. Nothing. Someone had taken it with
them. A pro job.

I checked I had my gun with me and
that it was loaded.

I knocked on some doors and asked
some questions. The bungalow was a rental.

I looked up Mecklenburg at the library.

I drove back to the home address.
The husband’s car was parked in the drive; I snuck close and shone a flash on
the licence holder. I read the registration name. I swore.

I rang my client and told her to
meet me at my office in an hour. I spent the hour looking up my client and her
daddy at the library. That visit earned a few angry words. She had given me a
fake name. I kept my mouth shut, but only just.

I told her she was a dope.

She told me she wasn’t paying me
for advice.

I asked her if she had been at the
bungalow and she denied it.

She left in a slam of doors. Took
effort to slam my office and the reception room doors. I took a few more
swallows of my bourbon.

I started at the beginning again.
Followed the husband. Asked a few questions. Paid a snitch. Expenses. That got
me a name here, a friendly apartment manager there, a picked lock, and a tailed
car. It took me all day. I rang my detective contact. He was busy getting a car
out of the harbor with a body in the trunk.

I had all the info. I just couldn’t
put it all together. I needed a drink. And some time to think.

I had spent more than forty eight
hours following him and asking questions. Did he sleep? I know I didn’t.

The bar was my favourite haunt.
But the rain was hard and wet and the queue to get in was long. The joint was crowded
and noisy. Friday night. I had forgotten what day it was.

Jimmy the bouncer nodded at me and
let me in. My usual table was taken by a little man with cheap glasses and an expensive
brunette. I took a booth up the back. I leaned on my arm and watched the show. On
my second drink, my eyes closed.

I dreamed.

The broken pieces of the case
flitted around like gulls. Numbers written on the body of a dead accountant. A
naked girl wearing earrings and bright red lipstick. A too tall man in a powder
blue suit. A slim and pretty boy chauffer, an old man in a wheelchair and a Buick
with a body in the trunk. A rich blond bleeding money.

The memory gulls cried and
flapped. They got louder. They flew into my face. My arms flailed to keep them
away from my eyes.

I screamed and they swooped away
to peck at the pieces of the case.

The pretty boy kissed the naked
girl and then split in half. One half got in the driver’s seat of the Buick and
the other half shot himself in the head and then climbed in the trunk. I chased
the naked girl. I kept asking her if her earrings were jade. No, they’re German
she said. The naked girl took off the earrings, wiped her lipstick on blue suit
guy and vanished. Blue suit guy pushed the wheelchair down some stairs. The
earrings appeared in his hand. The wheelchair wreckage vanished in return. The red
lipstick looked like blood.

I woke with a start, as someone
screamed my name.

My client was face first on the
table top in front of me.

“Drop the knife,” Betty said in
her ear.

I blinked.

“Hey, Betty,” I said.

“Hey, Sam. She was going to stab
you in the back.”

“Figures. You saw her from the
stage?”

“Yep.” She pressed hard on the blond’s
twisted arm. A flash of pain crossed her face. “Who is she?” Betty asked.

“My client.”

Betty snorted. “You can pick ‘em.”

“Sure can.”

Jimmy, the bouncer was there by
then and Tony, the manager. “Call the cops,” I told him. “Ask for Detective Jefferson.
No-one else. They’re all crooked.”

Jimmy watched the poisonous blond.
I trained a gun on her under the table. Safer that way.

Betty sat on my lap. It didn’t
help my thinking. The band started playing when it was clear the show was over
and Betty wasn’t coming back.

When Jefferson arrived, he asked, “Who’s
the blond?”

“Detective, may I introduce Tiffany, daughter of John Athelstan Riley.”

“The inventor in the wheelchair?”

“That’s the one.”

“And?”

“She shot your accountant.”

“I wish she would.”

“I mean the body in the trunk, Boris
Mecklenburg.”

His eyes narrowed. “How-?”

“Never mind.” I lit a cigarette. “Tiffany
here married Joey Camino last year. It was in all the society pages.”

“He’s mob.”

“I know. He still is. I spent all
day trailing after him. Maybe daddy didn’t know.”

“Daddy likes him,” she
interrupted. “He listens when he talks about his machines.”

“She hired me to tail her husband.
She thought he was cheating on her. He is. With her pretty boy chauffer.”

Betty made a face. “Ouch.”

“She gave me a fake name, but I’m
a good detective. She and Joey were stealing Daddy Riley’s plans and selling them
to the German government. Boris the accountant was their contact. But hubby got
greedy and thought he could cut her out of the deal and Tiffany got annoyed.”

“So she shot Boris?” Jefferson
asked.

“Yeah. Came back later with help
to get him in the car.”

“Did she kill her husband, too?”

“Didn’t need to. That’s my fault. I
told her he was having an affair with the boy. All she needed to do was tell
the mob.”

“They don’t like nancy boys.”

“No. And then she came here to tie
up her last loose end.” I kissed Betty’s cheek. “If it wasn’t for my girl,
here, I’d be dead too.”

“No one stabs my man in the back,
except me.”

Jefferson laughed. “Evidence?”

“The scene has been cleaned, but
he was shot at his place. I’d ask Daddy’s servants. One of them must have helped
her clean up the scene and get rid of the body. The trash has been dumped. I’d
try the neighbour’s bin. There must be something in it or they wouldn’t have taken
it.”

Wednesday, 6 March 2013

Have it divided into chapters of
however long you like. I usually shoot for 2-3,000 words. It depends, for me,
how much info I have in each chapter. Some are wordy but nothing much happens
and some just have good places to break them. I usually write the whole story
before I start posting, but it’s up to you. Others prefer 10-15k words in a
chapter, but as I post often, I can get away with shorter ones.

Make sure you have put all legal
disclaimers, ratings, warnings about content or trigger themes, etc. in your
story. Think about and write your summary before you start loading it.

1.
First you have to upload your saved document.

Open the ‘publish’ tab in ff.

Click on ‘doc manager’. It shows a
box with a lot of slots. Scroll down to see more info about the types of documents
you can load. There is a box marked ‘upload’.

Name your document and click ‘locate
file on your computer’. Find the file and select it. Press 'submit document'. Wait a few
seconds.

It will appear in one of the slots.
You can edit it here. It’s a good idea to check to make sure it uploaded
without problems. A dot in the middle of a word, for example, Mr. J.Jenks will
read as a web address and ff will delete it. Add spaces after the dot if you
want to put in a net address and it will miss it.

Save
the changes.

2.
Accept guidelines.

Open the publish tab, go to the ‘new
story’ tab. You will have to read and accept the guidelines.

The warning looks like this:

The site insists that you accept the
guidelines each time you start a new story. It will stay in force for seven
days. So, if you start another story within that time period, you will not have
to accept the guidelines again.

Please abide by the wishes of authors
who have actually requested that fanfic NOT be written for their stories. They
are listed on the same page. Click 'yes'.

3.
New story

Click ‘new story’ again. Follow the
prompts to name your new story, write a summary, pick the genre, main
characters, language etc. There are thousands of categories and crossovers if
it combines two genres. i.e. Harry potter and Twilight or whatever. You can
save your favourite categories.

Do NOT write in your summary that you
suck at summaries. If you, as the author, can’t write a decent summary, why the
hell should anyone else bother to read it? It just shows that you can’t write
and they will assume that your story will be rubbish too. I know they are
tricky to write, but you know your story better than anyone, so sell it. Don’t give away the whole story
in the summary either. Try to write it like a movie tag line.

The story example I am using in the
pics is a one shot challenge about Charlie and Sue’s history called Heroes and
Villains. My summary was this:

A writing challenge from JBNP. Did
you ever wonder how in the world Charlie suddenly ended up with Sue Clearwater? What happened in the past to make Charlie the
man he became? Did those actions influence his friends as well?

People skim through the summaries
looking for things to read so make sure it sounds interesting and not lame.

If it was a one shot don’t forget to
select the ‘complete’ button.

Load the first chapter where prompted
and you’re away.

Fanfic will send an email to all the
people who have you on their author alert list that you have loaded a new story.

4.
Loading other chapters.

Load the new chapter into the doc manager
in the usual way, check it, edit it, and save the changes.

Then go to the ‘manage stories’ tab.
You will see a page that lists all your stories and summaries. Select the one
you are adding a chapter to, click the title and the summary page opens.

Click ‘content/chapters’. You can
edit and name your chapters in here if you wish to do so.

Click ‘post new chapter’. Select the
next chapter from the drop down menu at the right hand side. It will default to
number consecutively. Don’t forget to save changes.

Again, a message will be sent out
that you have uploaded to anyone who has you on an alert.

When your story is complete, don’t
forget to change the story status to ‘complete’ and save changes.

5.
Pictures.

I haven’t dealt with the image loader
function. You can now add an image to your story after you click a box to say that you own the image or have the permission of the image owner to use it. I do not understand why
fanfic has done this. I get that images are cool and add something, but it’s
fanfic; we don’t own the worlds we are writing about. We sure as heck don’t own
the images. But in any case, the images are loaded through an image manager,
similar to the document manager.

Oddly, fanfic has chosen a 6/9 width
to height ratio, or basically the opposite to every other banner maker out
there. I assume that has something to do with the mobile site version.

Sunday, 3 March 2013

Another challenge from Chuck Wendig’s terribleminds. This
week a super ultra mega game of aspects.

Five categories for sub-genre, setting, conflict, aspect and
theme. I rolled (well, random number generated) the following:

Southern gothic love triangle set in an opium den with a
forbidden book & a theme of nature, man’s greatest enemy.

2k words. I do not cheat and keep rolling until something
suits me. I go with what I got the first time. I had to look up southern
gothic:

Southern Gothic is a
subgenre of Gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place
exclusively in the American South. Common themes in Southern Gothic literature
include deeply flawed, disturbing or disorienting characters, decayed or
derelict settings, grotesque situations, and other sinister events relating to
or coming from poverty, alienation, racism, crime, and violence.[1] It is
unlike its parent genre in that it uses these tools not solely for the sake of
suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the
American South, with the Gothic elements taking place in a magic realist context
rather than a strictly fantastical one. The images of Great Depression
photographer Walker Evans are frequently seen to evoke the visual depiction of
the Southern Gothic.

The southern Gothic
style is one that employs the use of macabre, ironic events to examine the
values of the American South. (From Wikipedia)

Tricky - I do not know what those values are… in any case,
here is my entry.

~~~~~~~~~

Madame Won Ton’s

“This is madness,” Guy announced, but he followed them
anyway. He was loath to let either of them out of his sight. “As if anything
called ‘Madame Won Ton's is a real opium den.”

“My contact assured me that this was the place,” Chris said
as he lifted the beaded curtain. The dingy interior had been painted in deep,
dark red but had faded with time. It had taken them some time to locate the
dilapidated building down a narrow lane in the back alleys of New Orleans. It
hadn’t helped that the wind and the rain seemed to be trying to stop them.

“Come on, Guy. It’ll be fun,” said Maja.

Guy was starting to think that those words from Maja always
preceded a disaster, emotional or actual.

Chris glanced at him over his shoulder. “Yeah, Guy, let’s go
burn the midnight oil.” An opium joke.

Guy liked Chris; a lot. And that was a problem. He liked
Chris, but he loved Maja, who had been Guy’s best friend since he was four, and
was currently Chris’ girlfriend. Add in the fact that Guy was starting to think
that he swung both ways and it got very messy indeed. Complicated. His life was
complicated. “Explain to me again, just how collecting opium antiques got you
so interested in illegal drugs?”

Chris gave him a mischievous grin.

God, Guy loved that grin. If he wasn’t so sure that Chris
was firmly hetero he might be in love with him, too. He heard them go at it
last night. He had lain in his bed with his hand on his cock and listened. And
felt bad for doing it, too. Guilt and sex always went together for him. He
adjusted himself in his jeans at the thought.

Chris stepped in close to him and whispered, “Get you hand
off your dream stick, Guy.”

“You need to stop with the opium metaphors. It’s poppycock.”

Chris guffawed. “Good one, Guy.”

Guy looked astonished. “Seriously? That comes from opium,
too?”

“Oh, you didn’t mean that? I thought you meant… you know…
poppies.”

Guy wanted to lie, but couldn’t. “No.”

“I take it back, then. I thought you were hilariously witty
as well as cute.”

Cute? “Yeah… and got a great dream stick.”

“I’ll bet.”

“If you two can stop flirting for a minute, there’s a news
bulletin.” Maja was staring at her phone.

The men exchanged a look. The whole town was waiting for the
storm to hit. Hurricane Katrina. Word was it was going to be bad.

“More reason to rescue this book now; before the storm,”
Chris argued.

“The levy will hold,” Guy said, but Maja didn’t look
comforted.

“A book; really, Chris?” Guy had just come with them because
they asked him to. He didn’t need another reason.

“Not just any book - it’s the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.”

“Say that again in English.”

Chris stepped closer to Guy and spoke in a low voice. “It
dates from the mid 1500’s and it’s priceless. It lists all the books prohibited
by the Catholic Church.”

“Did they even print books then?”

“They did, but only just. It took them a century to start
complaining.”

“That’s quick for the Church.”

Chris laughed.

“See? I can be witty.” He studied Chris. “She doesn’t know
the value, does she?”

Chris looked delighted. “No.”

Guy had an awful thought. Did he mean Madame Won Ton or
Maja? He opened his mouth to ask when a woman entered the room and interrupted.
She was probably close to sixty, but it was hard to tell in the darkened room
and Guy could never pick ages with Asian women. Her dark hair was elaborately
coiffed and her glasses were an older style with frames too large for her face.

“We’re closed.”

Chris turned to face her.

“Oh, it’s you.” She looked over the friends. Guy felt as if
her eyes rested on him for longer. Maja was silent under her scrutiny. The
woman nodded, and then gestured to the doorway she had entered. “No time,” she
said enigmatically and walked away.

They followed her.

Guy would have lost the bet that this was not a real opium
den. Secret doors and hidden passageways led them through a room filled with
low couches and tables. Each set with a tray of opium implements; the pipe, a
lamp, a tiny pedestal dish to hold the opiate. There was no attempt to hide
what it was once you were in it.

Guy felt as if he had stepped back in time. It was like an
elaborate tea ceremony where the ritual mattered more than the tea. He would
have thought most people were into popping pills or a quick injection. But the
room was clearly well used; the air reeked with a bitter-sweet scent.

Chris inhaled deeply and lifted an eyebrow at him.

For the first time, he felt a twinge of doubt about Chris.
He didn’t know the man well; only had Maja’s word and he knew her judgement was
flawed. Especially when it came to men. Maja’s problems came from her
relationship with Daddy dearest. She might have torrid relationships with other
men but she always went home to Daddy. It made him shudder just to think of it,
but as a child he had been powerless to help. Daddy’s death had freed her and
given her deep pockets. The combination was not good.

The women had gone into another room. Chris glanced that way
and then suddenly pushed Guy up against the nearest wall. Shocked, Guy didn’t
react. Chris’s hand held him firmly at the throat, holding him immobile. His
thigh pushed between his legs and his hard body pressed against him. Guy
reacted to that with a jolt of excitement.

And Chris knew.

He smiled at him. He pressed harder… rhythmically. He dry
humped him and Guy couldn’t stop him. Nor could he stop his cock hardening
painfully.

“You’d let me, wouldn’t you, Guy?” he whispered.

“Yes.” An admission laced with shame, treachery and guilt.
His best friend’s lover and he’d do it without a second’s thought.

“Huh,” he said, as if he had proved his own point. He
blinked, and then he kissed him.

It was hard and forceful and not feminine at all and Guy
loved it. He didn’t even know where his own hands were. As first kisses went it
was brilliant.

The house was hit by a wind jolt that stopped them both. Guy
felt just as buffeted. Was he powerless now as well? One hand was clinging flat
against the wall and the other was cupped over Chris’ ass. Divided, as always.

“Chris?” Maja called.

“Later,” Chris whispered in his ear. He bit the lobe as
punctuation.

Guy couldn’t move. It took him a bit longer to follow into
the other room. He did some heavy breathing and wiped at his mouth with the
back of his hand. It didn’t help. He could taste him. He licked his lips and
wanted to moan.

Maja gave him an odd look. Did she know? Shit.

Chris only had eyes for the book.

It wasn’t what Guy expected. Stupidly, he had this romantic
image of a giant leather bound tome, an illuminated manuscript, not the normal
book sized simple listing that Chris held in his hand. “That’s it?” he asked.

“Yes. See?” The frontispiece had an illustration of people
burning books. His knowledge of Roman numerals wasn’t good, but he thought it
said 1758. He didn’t say anything.

“Did you pay her?” Chris asked Maja. She nodded tightly.

Of course, Maja was the money. Guy’s bad feeling about this
settled like a stone in his stomach.

The house rocked with another blast from the storm. The
lights flickered and then went out. Guy heard a door bang and then Maja called
out, “Chris?”

There was no answer.

Guy knew he was gone. The book, the money and the Asian
woman would all be gone when the lights came up. “I’m here,” he told her, as if
that would help.

The lights flickered back on for a second before going
again. Long enough to confirm his suspicions. They’d been conned.

“Maja?”

No answer.

He groped for where she had been standing. “We need to go.”

“What’s the point?” she sounded desolate.

He felt guilty. “I guess you’re right.” He finally touched her
and pulled her into his arms. “Why don’t we sit out the storm here?”

“He didn’t have a contact. She recognized him.”

“Yes. And we came in his car.” There was no chance of them
finding a taxi in this storm.

A pause.

“There must be matches around… this is an opium den,” Guy
said.

Maja snorted. “Wanna try some?” Her face lit up as the match
flared.

“You have opium?”

“Yeah… he loves authenticity.”

“Right.” And he’d make her carry the drugs for safety.

The couches were comfortable; made to recline on and they
had all the supplies.

When they crawled from the rubble days later, they were
together in all ways. Chris was gone. They hoped permanently. But Guy
remembered that whispered promise to see him later. It gave him the chills.

~~~~~~~~

It started with that feeling that someone was watching him.
Guy woke one morning with the taste of Chris on his mouth. It wasn’t possible.
They had found the drowned car in the storm clean up. The body was buried
quickly. The book was gone.

As he and Maja stepped out of a tiny wine bar one night she
clutched at his arm.

He glanced the way she was staring and got a glimpse of
elaborately piled black hair, before the figure stepped into the shadows.

“It was her,” Maja insisted. “I’d know those glasses
anywhere.”

“We didn’t do anything wrong. It was... him.”

“Do you think he conned her, too?”

“Probably.” He shrugged. Coward that he was, he didn’t tell
her about his odd feelings. They both had almost flashbacks to the days spent
in the ruined house. Nightmares. Shock. The whole city did.

It was rebuilding, but it would take money and the South’s
money was old and stagnant. Not good for starting again, only good for keeping
things the way they were.

Guy was reading a book at a streetcar stop when he felt the
nip at his earlobe. He spun around and there was nothing there. He couldn’t
tell Maja about it.

But when he got home she was in the bath; her knees up and
her arms wrapped around them. She was shivering.

“What happened?” he asked.

“She cursed him.”

“Madame Won Ton?”

“Yes.”

“You saw her again.”

She nodded jerkily.

He sat on the tiled floor and reached for her hand. “I felt
him... at the streetcar stop.”

Maja looked terrified. “What does he want?”

“Us? He lost us.”

“I’m scared, Guy.”

“Me too,” he confessed. He stripped and got in the bath with
her.

“When?” he asked.

“Tonight. Midnight.”

Maja had inherited her father’s house. The three storey
French Quarter home within walking distance of everywhere in New Orleans you
would want to go.

They closed the shutters, dimmed the lights, poured two very
large glasses of wine and sat down to wait for him.

It wasn’t a knock; it was a dull scrape sound.

A drowned zombie was not a pretty thing but Guy opened the
door and let him in.

Chris apologized, in his own way. He wished them well,
kissed them both on the lips and shambled away.

He left the scent of the swamp behind touched with the bitter-sweet memory of opium.